Saturday, April 4, 2020

Fresh
off reading an article of digital pollution, this is also a personal reckoning of
sorts. What the Internet and particularly social media has given us are
platforms. Whether we are worthy of being given platforms of such immense power
is a different matter.

Air,
water and soil pollution are phenomena which most sensible people have
acknowledged and are working to address. The concept of digital pollution is
yet to take root to that extent. Given our political leanings and enemies of
choice, it is all too easy to classify the opposing camp’s views as the pollutants.
Yet digital pollution has more to do with information overload rather than
bias.

Looking
through my suggested Facebook memories, the occasional joy of finding something
unique is counterbalanced by the massive amounts of inane posts which must have
meant something to me then but sure don’t mean much now. They sit there,
somewhere on my timeline, to reappear on their anniversary to be rejected yet
again.

Much
like plastic, a piece of digital information tends to live on forever; refuses
to degrade; denies the grim reaper. Much like plastic, our unhealthy obsession
with documentation ensures that the most meaningless moments are also recorded
for posterity’s sake. Like that plastic bag picked from the grocer’s eventually
does, decades of irrelevant data will eventually start clogging the system in a way
that is tough to imagine an individual bag causing.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Before COVID-19 denies me access to a beautiful part of my (almost) daily routine for at least the next 7 days, the trail shines in all its filtered sunlit glory. Some may accuse me of having posted very similar pics in the past but I just can't help it. If not anything else, it's a reminder to me that there exist some things I can never tire of.

What does tire me is the infantile stupidity of "Humanity is the virus and COVID-19 is the cure" and of the pseudo-science/patriotism being peddled (read vibration forwards and plate banging equals Siachen soldiers' duty).

COVID-19 should not be cause for pointing Facebook fingers at "greedy" humans. The most at danger are our most weak & vulnerable - the poor, the old, the infrastructurally challenged. Wishing for their death is just casual Facebook psychosis. Neither should it be treated as a free pass to racism ala Kung-Flu and other such monikers.

We are a wonderfully capable species on an extraordinary planet, problem/solution in our lab/home. The mad urge to bang plates could be much better redirected towards some quiet introspection. To listen to the birds and the breeze, to pay attention to the sea inside our minds.